Reading from property file in v2 plugins

This is going to be a quick one. How do one read from a property file in a JIRA v2 plugin?

Yeah, I know. It is pretty simple. But there are few who are stuck with it - as you can see from this thread.

And there are 2 use cases here:

1. Read a property file from the WEB-INF/classes folder in the JIRA installation directory. Remember, the absolute path can be different in different installations and based on different Operation systems.
   
   But should we care? Not much because Atlassian already have put in the effort to load property files from WEB-INF/classes folder in a fault tolerant manner that works across different applications servers.
   
   Here is how you load the properties:
   
   InputStream iStream = ClassLoaderUtils.getResourceAsStream("jtricks.properties", this.getClass());
   Properties p = new Properties();
   p.load(iStream);
   
   where ClassLoaderUtils is com.atlassian.plugin.util.ClassLoaderUtils.
   
   The individual values can be read using the respective key as follows:
   
   p.getProperty("test.key")
   
   
2. Read a property file from JIRA Home and protect it from JIRA upgrades.
   
   This is also pretty easy because the JIRA Home folder is already stored in database and can be retrieved using JiraHome.class. Loading properties is then a piece of cake.
   
   File jiraHome = ComponentAccessor.getComponent(JiraHome.class).getHome();
   File propertyFile = new File(jiraHome, "jtricks-home.properties");
   FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(propertyFile);
   Properties p = new Properties();
   p.load(fileInputStream);
   
   The individual values can be read using the respective key as we did in the first case:
   
   p.getProperty("test.key")

Major differences between the two?

• Properties in Method 1 are loaded during startup and requires a restart if the property values are modified
• Depending up on how frequently the properties are read, Method 1 might perform better
• Method 1 is not tolerant to upgrades. Make sure to copy the property file to WEB-INF/classes folder of new JIRA installation during upgrades

Attached servlet plugin has the full code for both methods. The servlet can be run at /plugins/servlet/readproperties. For more about servlets, check out the JIRA Development cookbook.

read-properties.zip
File Size:	23 kb
File Type:	zip

Download File

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